Who's To Blame?

Who’s to Blame?

Matthew 13:24-43[1]

These days it can seem like nobody is willing to take responsibility for their actions. From a child in preschool who has a problem sharing a toy to those at the highest reaches of our society wrangling over power, the standard answer is “It’s not my fault.” The idea that “the buck stops here” could have very well from “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. After all, resolving our problems by pointing the finger at someone else started in the Garden of Eden! It seems that the human family has always had a tendency to blame someone else for the problems in this world.

I think that natural tendency only gets stronger in times of crisis. When we are surrounded by realities that keep us up at night, as we are these days, many of us find comfort in knowing whom to blame. And there’s no shortage of people out there who are willing to try to convince you that they know exactly who’s to blame. But those who are constantly pointing the finger don’t offer any constructive solutions other than the (hollow) promise that if we give them power, they will fix things. Of course, for those of us who have been around a while, it’s all too obvious that they either never could or never intended to make good on their promises. Maybe we should have seen through their attempts to blame someone else. In my experience, the only way things change is if we take responsibility for our part in a problem and try to do something about it ourselves.

Our Gospel lesson for today comes from a situation of extreme crisis. The early Christians for whom Matthew was writing his Gospel were likely Jewish converts. But because of their faith in Jesus, they had not only been expelled from their synagogues, but also likely had been shunned by their families. They were treated like heretics and blasphemers. They had found new life through Jesus’ promise of blessing for the poor, the merciful, the peacemakers, and those who were longing for God’s righteousness to renew the world. Part of what troubled them was the fact that their friends and family, people whom they loved, either couldn’t or wouldn’t see the truth that had set them free.

In fact, that still troubles faithful Jewish people to this day. One of the reasons why they have such difficulty accepting Jesus as the Messiah is because they believe the Messiah is supposed to heal the world. Since the world is obviously not healed, then in their minds, the Messiah cannot have come. But Jewish people aren’t the only ones who are unimpressed by the “kingdom” that Jesus proclaimed. In that day, Jesus’ death and resurrection didn’t change the fact that the Romans were still in power, and they wielded that power with cruelty and brutality. The wealthy still oppressed the poor with no accountability. Religious leaders used their position not to serve the people but to gain wealth and power for themselves. Suffering, violence, injustice, and oppression were still overwhelming the world. I can understand why some thought that whatever “kingdom” Jesus was talking about must not have made much of a difference. When you think about it, all of those things are still true today.

But that’s why Jesus told the parables in this chapter of parables in Matthew’s Gospel. He knew firsthand the hardship, the hostility, and the rejection they would face. So he told them parables to help them understand the “mystery” or the “secret” of the kingdom of God. And that secret is this: despite the appearances to the contrary, God’s kingdom will ultimately change all things and everyone. We see it in the “Parable of the Sower,” where the “fruit” produced by the good soil far exceeds all expectations. We see it in the “Parable of the Mustard Seed,” where a tiny seed becomes a “large tree.” We see it in the “Parable of the Leaven” where the yeast inevitably works its way through a large batch of dough. The idea is that the change the kingdom of God is bringing will inevitably work it’s way through this whole world.

One of the lessons I think Jesus wanted believers to come away with is hope. Despite all that remains wrong with this world, I think Jesus wanted believers of his day and every day to fully embrace the hope that one day the kingdom of God will right all the wrongs. There’s so much that seems wrong with this world, it’s hard to wrap our heads around this promise. More than that, the promise is that the kingdom of God will lift all the burdens. It will do away with violence in all its forms. It will restore all people and all creation to the way God intended when he made it all “very good.” The problems in this world can get even the best of us down at times. More than that, they can cause us to doubt whether God is as good and loving and powerful as we’ve always believed. But we don’t have to resort to trying to figure out who is to blame for all the wrongs in the world. It doesn’t really help anyway. What helps is the assurance that God is going to make things right in the end.

That leads to a second lesson from these parables. The hope that none of the wrongs in this world will ultimately prevail against God’s love that is powerful beyond measure[2] leads us not only away from getting caught in a cycle of blaming others. It also encourages us to do what we can here and now. One thing we can do is to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Mt 6:33). What that means is illustrated by a couple of parables that follow our lesson for today. Like a man who found a treasure, or a merchant who found a flawless pearl, “seeking the kingdom” means that pursuing God’s ways, extending God’s love, and working for God’s peace become the most important focus of our lives. The hope that God will set all things right is no “opium of the masses” that keeps us from working to set things right.[3] It is the very guiding light that inspires us to engage in that work with all our hearts and minds and strength!

Our world has changed a great deal. The church was once the focal point for “seeking the kingdom.” For better or for worse, that’s not always the case any longer. The “worse” of it is that many of us don’t devote as much time and energy to “seeking the kingdom” through the church as we once did. There are all kinds of distractions that pull us in so many other directions that we just don’t have the “bandwidth” for church. But the “better” of it is that there are all kinds of people out there “seeking the kingdom” in all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways that those of us in the church might not be able to imagine. I can’t say that I’m happy that those people are doing their work outside the church because I’ve been in the church all my life and I love the church. But what I can say is that I’m happy they are “seeking the kingdom,” and that’s the point of it all. That means the kingdom of God is still growing like a mustard seed that will become a huge tree. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in “real” life, but in the kingdom of God, all things are possible!

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 7/23/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. “The Study Catechism” 1998, questions 7-8.

[3] As Karl Marx (in)famously said in “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844.

 

On A Mission

 On A Mission

Matthew 9:35-10:16[1]

When I was growing up, there were only two avenues for those who felt “called to special service” in the church: either serving as a pastor or a missionary. At least that was all I knew. When I “surrendered to the call” at the age of 17, I’m not sure I had a very clear idea of what my path would look like. When I was a freshman in college, I knew I wanted to earn a Ph. D. degree and teach in a college or seminary. And I pursued that path for 13 years. After finishing my degree, I taught at the Baptist seminary in Fort Worth for 9 years. I wrestled with feelings of being pulled toward pastoral ministry, but I didn’t think I had what it took to be a pastor. The truth is that I knew what to expect in an academic environment, and I had no idea what to expect in a pastorate. I would say that’s still the case, and it’s one of the things I like about my role. The one thing I (thought) I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be a missionary, because they were supposed go to an impoverished country in Africa or Asia.

As it turns out, during my time at the Seminary, I also wrestled with feelings of being pulled to serve as a missionary. The head of the Baptist mission agency was a persuasive speaker, and I found myself gripping the arm rests on my seat on more than one occasion when he was sounding the call to serve on the mission field! And, at one point I actually volunteered to go live overseas to teach in a mission seminary in Prague. Unfortunately, the details didn’t work out. But as many of you know, I’ve spent some time in a variety of places. I taught at a mission seminary in the Philippines for 2 months in 1994. I visited Pastor Manuel in Nicaragua in 2000. And I met the Presbyterian nuns in Cameroon in 2011. As those of you who have served on the Membership and Outreach committee or on the Session know, I still have a keen interest in supporting mission partners both here and around the world.

A funny thing happened along the way. The mission field moved! Most observers of our culture would say that this country is now just as much a “mission field” as anywhere else. And you can find all kinds of outlets for mission, from working with impoverished communities, to helping victims of violence, to sharing God’s love with those who have never had much of a meaningful relationship with a church. I personally think this is a golden opportunity for the church in our day. There’s another shift that’s taking place in our culture. Most people under 40 aren’t satisfied to simply “send a check” and let someone else do the work. They want to “get their hands dirty” by getting involved directly in mission projects. I think that makes this post-pandemic era an exciting time for the church in our society. If our churches are going to thrive, everyone is going to have to step up. We can no longer expect the “paid staff” to do the work of ministry. We have the opportunity to reclaim the fundamental Presbyterian conviction that “every member is a minister”!!

It might not seem at first glance that our Gospel lesson for today relates to this idea. The gist of the lesson is that Jesus was sending the Twelve, his hand-picked ministry apprentices, to go out and extend his ministry of preaching and healing. Since they were the “Apostles,” we might think that our lesson only applies to “special” people serving in “special” roles. But a closer look at the lesson in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole makes it clear that Matthew presents this story in a very different way. Like the other evangelists, Matthew was writing his gospel for a particular Christian community. And the message he wanted to convey in this passage was that Jesus not only commissioned the “Twelve” to extend his ministry. That commission was also intended for the church of Matthew’s day, and in fact for the church of every day! From this perspective, the church that seeks to follow Jesus faithfully has always found itself to be “on a mission”!

We see this reflected in our Gospel lesson in some subtle ways. For example, both Mark and Luke report Jesus’ commission to the Twelve Apostles, and they report something about them carrying out their work. On the other hand, Matthew, who has the most developed account of this episode, says nothing whatsoever about the Twelve carrying out this commission! It would seem that Matthew was directing Jesus’ original commission to the Twelve to the early church community for whom he was writing his Gospel. They were the ones he wanted to encourage to follow Jesus’ original instructions. Again, I think the point is that the church of Matthew’s day, and every day, is meant to carry out the original commission to the Apostles.

We see this also in that Matthew takes some of the traditions about Jesus’ teaching and connects them to this “sermon” to his church about carrying out the mission of the kingdom of God. For example, Jesus’ admonition that “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops” (Mt 10:26) in this setting serves as an encouragement to bold proclamation of the gospel. In Luke’s Gospel, this same teaching serves as a warning against hypocrisy: “whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops” (Lk 12:3). It might seem confusing at first, but in a very real sense both Matthew and Luke were using Jesus’ teachings much like we would read Scripture today. They were taking them and applying them as they were led by the Spirit to the life situations of their respective church communities. Pastors everywhere continue to do the same thing every Sunday! Matthew has interpreted this saying as an encouragement to believers of that day, as well as every day, to carry out the mission Jesus gave us without fear.[2]

I could go on, but I think you get the point. In Matthew’s Gospel, this passage was meant not just to reflect the call to mission of a select few. Rather, Matthew saw everyone in the church as called to the “mission” of extending Jesus’ work. We’re all called to take part in sharing the good news of God’s love. We’re all called to take part in offering care to those who need it. That’s true regardless of how “actively” we carry out that work. Whether we go overseas or across town, whether we preach and teach or serve behind the scenes, we all share the same joy. To this end Matthew quotes Jesus’ promise that even the ones who simply offer a “cup of cold water” (Mt 10:42) get to see themselves as equal partners in the mission.

I think this perspective is going to be crucial for the church in our day. We live in a time when many people prefer to go and do rather than sitting back and watching. I think the more we can orient our ministry as a church toward “going and doing,” the more we will thrive in this strange new world. As we create opportunities for everyone to take part in the mission of sharing God’s love, we encourage more people in our congregation and in our community to step up and join us. When we do that, we will be reclaiming the conviction that we’re all “on a mission.”

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 6/18/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible IX:260: he says Matthew makes this a “foundational principle of Christian discipleship.”